The exhibition titled The Odyssey of Jalupo is a journey and an introduction to Coster Ojwang’s world, bringing together his interests in fashion, style, music, culture and visual arts.
“I’m welcoming people into my world,” he says.
The exhibition shows works created from 2020 to the present and explores spirituality, memory, ancestry, land, family and lineage, existence in Nairobi, culture and music.
“I want to tell African stories in the visual art form. There are landscapes of my place, repositories of memory, relationships and people juxtaposed on the land,” he says.
His grandmother, who was a singer, has had a profound influence on the works, alongside his understanding of God from a Christian perspective and his relationship with his father.
The exhibition comprises 41 pieces made using mixed media on canvas, collage, charcoal, acrylics on canvas, oils on canvas, and charcoal and acrylics on paper.
The Blackjacks and Daisies series comprises nine pieces and features subjects that are recurring elements in Ojwang’s work since Covid-19.
“As a Luo man who has been living in Nairobi and in different places in my life and work, blackjacks resemble how they can be transported from one place to another,” he says.
He also sees resilience in the plants.
“They dry themselves. It represents the end of their life, which is usually the beginning of a new life. They are easily transported plants.”
The daisies, meanwhile, speak to patience, care and the fleeting nature of beauty.
“The patience and love you show the flowers before they give back to you the same beauty and care – it is a very fleeting sensation. You wait for too long, and then you have waited for about a week, and they are dead. That one week is very rewarding,” he says.
A piece, Resting Matriarch, looks at women and the role that they have played in his life. The work represents his interest in family history and the influence of his sister Lundi, his mother and grandmother.
He views Resting Matriarch as a symbol of hope and a representation of the modern woman. He has dressed the woman in what looks retro but is also current.
Hug Me Please depicts him and his mother, like in his song Anyango. It explores grief, memory and the longing for a departed loved one. Ojwang’s mother died when he was young, leaving him with fragmented memories.
“I don’t have memories of my mother. I remember one when she was sitting at the doorstep of our kitchen when I was five years old and my father was attending to a sheep giving birth,” he recalls.
He wishes his mother had lived long enough for him to send money through Mpesa and buy him khangas.
“For a few years, I got to cry on Mother’s Day because everywhere on the internet is Happy Mother’s Day, but I only have one picture of my mother, and it is only me who has it,” he says.
He wants the works to give audiences a closer experience of the person behind the different creative disciplines. The show is a precursor to what he wants to do with visual arts.
“Arts, music, culture, and fashion are all fighting for space. I want to show them to people, to invite people into my life. I want people to learn from me and appreciate art.”